Ethnography

I hate the word “consumer.” But I’m not sure what to do with it.

It drives me crazy when clients talk about “the consumer” like they’re some kind of other species out there foraging for nuts and berries in Wal-Mart, Rite Aid or the shopping malls of America. If only they could find the perfect combination of nuts and berries in their business offering they’d be able to lure “the consumer” to their section of the aisle.

It saddens me when clients profess an understanding of this other species based on some “quant-qual” they’ve done. Tossing around methodological pats-on-the-back like this bolsters their confidence that systems of knowing “the consumer” are (here comes another bad word) robust.

And it makes me scratch my head when members of the C-suite worry aloud that they’ve become too distanced from “the consumer” and that’s it’s time to roll up their sleeves, get on to the street and meet this other species.

Maybe it’s the cultural anthropologist in me. Anthropology long suffered from a similar disconnect from the humans it wondered and wrote about. It has wrestled with various ways of qualifying or quantifying the behavior of those humans. And one of the foundations of its ethnographic process is a meet and greet with the natives in the places and spaces where they live, breathe and experience the world.

The epistemological angst is much the same. The critical difference is that the scholars have acknowledged their obstacles, shortcomings, histories and such while the business world has not. One obvious reason for this is that most of the people populating the cubicles of the world’s big corporations are interested only in, capable of or too busy to digest little more than the PowerPoint version of the social universe. Another, related to this, is that many in the business world live by methodology alone. Theory, and a discussion of it, is – as they say – out of scope.

As a result, most of the big business world has never reaped the rewards of post-modern or post-structuralist thought – at least not on the level of public discourse. Certainly, strategists, consumer insights folks and others come home from a busy day at work, have a beer and reflect on their day, tasks, projects, challenges and such. But in the face of corporate silos, jockeying for jobs and the many tactical barriers to real innovation at any level, questioning the way organizations think, act and talk is bitching-based fodder for the water cooler rather than something that is perceived as possible to change. And so we have “the consumer,” the business world’s equivalent to anthropology’s primitive Other.

Where anthropology’s Other was exoticized as sexual, violent, magical, natural, primitive and savage, the business world’s Other is quite mundane. Consumers, or so I hear, aren’t that smart. They’re simple, not very sophisticated. They have fixed daily behaviors and preferences that can be tracked with surveys. They’re easily led to new, or refashioned old, nuts and berries with a spin or words, colors, stories or loyalty programs that will entrance their lesser minds. And they live in odd little communities called personae or segments.

If it sounds like we’re still living in the era of Mad Men, maybe a little Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can lead us into the present. For those living La Vida PowerPoint, the short version: how we talk about things influences the way we see those things and the world in general. Colors, numbers, spaces, people, relationships and the other ingredients of our world all appear to us to be what they are as fact based, in part, on the ways that we name and talk about them.

The application should be relatively clear. In always referring to the people who buy your products and services as “consumers,” you (the client) and you (the agency guy) have erected a first obstacle in your quest to understand and leverage your insights for competitive advantage. You have constructed a linguistic framing of “the consumer” as the Other in which they are not you and you are not them.

Put aside, for the moment, the fact that, unless you get your groceries and gas for free (and even then we’re in questionable territory because there’s the issue of where you choose to redeem your coupons), you, too, are a consumer. Then consider the following: this linguistic framing of “the consumer” as Other is an infection that courses through the blood of the C-suite, Strategy, Insights, Design and other organizational departments. It paralyzes action. It distorts vision. It leads to lethargy. And, in the worst of cases, it drives businesses to abdicate its role in work processes to the opinions, attitudes and ideas of this “consumer.”

How? It reinforces other barriers to knowing that previously existed (before the birth of the Consumer Insights department) between social categories of humans: if you live in New York City, the people living in Idaho might as well be in China; if you’re rich, the poor are another world; if you’re a man, women are a mystery; if you’re straight, the gays have all this disposable income.

Enter segmentation, psychographics and the persona. Engaging with the Other in tidy groups based on age, gender, race, economic status, education, geography, attitude, behavior and other, more brand or product related distinctions certainly makes some feel like as if they are getting closer to a more granular version of the consumer. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t.

Is the Active Mom, the Early Adopter or the Social Butterfly really a more accurate drilling down to the core of the “consumer”? Or are those terms just another way to make us feel like we’ve cracked the behavioral code of the species, another organization mythology we subscribe to in order to make our jobs more simple and efficient?

Some bullet points I know many who’ve made it this far wish had been put up front:

• Refer to “consumers” as “people (who buy our stuff or who might buy our stuff)” and you’ll be a hop, skip and jump closer to cultivating stronger insights

• Chill out the fantasy that methodology will answer your questions. It won’t.

• Ask yourself if you’ve even asked yourself the right questions.

• Stop pretending to be so objective. You’re not. It’s an illusion.

• Be more subjective. Ease up on the boundaries between “you” and “them.”

• Cast a wide net. Segmentation has its value, but so do warm bodies like yours.

• Explore first, validate much later. You’ll be surprised at what a little wondering can do.

• Co-creation is not asking the “consumer” what she wants. That’s a focus group.